MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO and founder of Facebook is trying hard to convince everyone that Facebook had no nefarious role in the 2016 US Presidential election. But according to President-elect Donald Trump’s digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the bulk of the campaign’s $250 million in online fundraising.

Source: Wired Magazine

Date: December 6th, 2016

Link: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-won-trump-election-not-just-fake-news/

Discussion

1) “The big takeaway was using digital in a digital-first way,” says Matt Lira, a Republican digital strategist.  “It was the main course. It wasn’t leftovers.”   What can companies learn from this “digital first” approach?

2) The Facebook “platform’s built to inform you about what people like and dislike….Donald Trump’s team took full advantage of the ability to perform massive tests with its ads. On any given day, the campaign was running 40,000 to 50,000 variants of its ads, testing how they performed in different formats, with subtitles and without, and static versus video, among other small differences.”   What might it mean when it says “different formats” and how do you generate “50,000” versions of an ad?